Whatever You Want
by Rachel C. Astrid
Summary: AU from 2x16 "The Mistress Always Spanks Twice." The investigation stalls when their suspect Lady Irena goes off the grid. What if Castle had decided to help Beckett blow off some steam that night? Inspired by/diverges from This Nikki Heat Thing.
1. Chapter 1

Notes: Reader luvmymissionary suggested I post Ch. 17 from _This Nikki Heat Thing _as a one-shot. Instead of just reposting the one chapter, I decided to include the beginning of 18 to round it out better and give readers of the original story a preview of what's to come.

There's some interest for this to be continued as its own AU piece. I could get on board with that. I'm pretty sure Castle and Beckett could be persuaded, too. Stay tuned for an AU Chapter 2.

* * *

**Whatever You Want**

* * *

Beckett versus Lady Irena. What had he done so right in a former life to see that unfold before him today—in a playroom, no less? Clearly karma thought he had been very, very good.

He'd thought that a wife/fiancée catfight was hot. That had nothing on the domme/detective battle he'd witnessed while perched unobtrusively on the spanking bench. Both women were intelligent, strong, and self-assured, attempting to tear one another down with nothing more than a surprisingly civil talk of legalities and privacy. But there had been an undeniable energy in the room that struck him with a new frisson of arousal. That was a scene he couldn't help but continue in his mind at night.

What began as a fantasy of them double-teaming him—and surely Beckett's teasing question, "Think you can handle two women at once, Ricky?" would have undone him on the spot—instead became a fantasy of the women vying for him. They didn't collaborate. They _competed_.

So very, very good.

There was only one problem.

As generous as the Universe was to him, it had sadistic timing.

The other night, he'd decided that he was never going to finish his manuscript—at least not one he'd want to publish under his name, let alone one that would make Beckett like him any better—if he let himself give way to fantasy without also concentrating on his plot.

He could still touch himself. He could still think and dream about anything he wanted; he knew none of that would change, nor would he want that.

But since the other night, he had forbidden himself from writing more sex scenes unless they were integral to the plot. As it was, he was still _removing _sex scenes that didn't really fit that bill and cutting out details that went beyond what Black Pawn would want. Privately, he didn't care what he wrote; he had few hard limits. Professionally, a vague line was set before him. He liked to toe that line and maybe even nudge it further without actually crossing it. He liked to pretend that Black Pawn was his bitch and not the other way around.

So he put in the time and did the work to advance the plot and minimize the gratuitous stuff, really tried to craft both a good story and a good apology, but really, he couldn't help but wonder. What were the odds? He had _just _resolved to scale back when a pro-domme was killed and hung from the monkey bars.

Seriously?

And then Beckett was oh-so-nonchalantly identifying custom cuffsand assuring the guys that _that position _was entirely possible. (Castle prided himself on believing a great deal was possible; admittedly, that position stretched the bounds of even his imagination. Just how flexible were Kate Beckett's mind and body, anyway?)

She had barely played with him ever since he offered—only half-joking—to rub lotion on her to protect her sensitive skin from the Cuban rays, and then suddenly today, all bets were off. While she threatened to zip him up in a leather hood and teased him with words like _hot, wild, _and _kinky_ in that excruciatingly sultry voice, the glint in her eye was more playful than ever. Darkly playful. Dilated pupils playful.

Either she really did have a new boyfriend bringing out her naughty side, or . . . she had Castle.

_Ricky_, according to her.

She had referred to him twice—for investigative reasons, of course—as _my boyfriend, Ricky_, and even Barry from The Love Shackle had made some priceless assumptions about them, but Castle still couldn't gauge whether or not she was actually seeing someone else. One dinner out did not a relationship make, and he knew she wasn't obligated to tell him; he wasn't looking for a breakup before they ever got started. Still, he was hopelessly curious.

Is that why she'd made no move to go out with him again after their night at Remy's? Or was it all just part of the game they played?

Taken or not, the sheer number of fantasies that she had evoked in him in just one day was insurmountable.

It was going to take measured effort to plot his story and stay on-task with all of that still running on a loop in his head.

Cruel, cruel universe.

So very, very good.

* * *

Kate had no plot—at least nothing worthy of a procedural story. And no matter how much she tried to make the connections, she still didn't always know how or why the characters ended up where they did.

But she _was_ getting better at something.

She was getting better at incorporating details whether they had everything or nothing to do with where she'd been lately or what she'd seen, blending what she knew and what she imagined. She was getting better at imagining, at going with the flow and letting Nikki and Rook do all the talking.

Among other things.

"_If we kissed right now," Rook said, burying his gloved hands in the pockets of his thick coat, "do you think our tongues would freeze together?"_

"_No." Nikki didn't even slow down, walking with purpose through the woods on the snowy mountainside._

_When she glanced at him over her shoulder, he still looked skeptical—a surprisingly good look for him. "How sure are you?"  
_

"_Sure enough."_

"_How much is 'enough'?"_

_She stopped just ahead of him and pivoted on her heel to lean in beside his ear and whisper something he wouldn't soon forget. Then she continued on the path alone, leaving him stunned in place._

_He took a second to recover. Only a second. "Are you volunteering?"_

"_Just walk, Rook."_

_He fell in step behind her. "Wouldn't be worried because you don't think it's that cold out, or because you aren't wet for me right now?"_

"_Walk," she commanded._

"_Ah, so you are wet." He cocked a brow at her when she finally looked over her shoulder again._

_Wordlessly, Nikki pushed him against the nearest tree and grabbed his wrist. Without bothering to remove his slim leather glove, she shoved his hand inside her panties._

_He moaned against her cheek: "I can't feel you through my glove."_

_Her voice caught at the sensation of Rook's leather-clad fingertips as she murmured back: "I didn't do it so _you _could feel _me_."_

* * *

She was in charge. He knew that. He just thought that he would enjoy it more often.

It had been fun to watch her debate client rights with Lady Irena yesterday, and to watch from the Observation Room today while she dominated William Caraway, the Smart Ass Masochist. It was less fun to watch her order Ryan and Esposito to the dungeon and assume that Castle would still gladly accompany her to the university. And even _less _fun to realize that she was right.

Damn it, Beckett.

Not that he was making an appointment anytime soon, but now that it was known around Lady Irena's that they were investigating a murder, he would have liked the opportunity to go back. Certainly beat the university where that self-righteous professor had insinuated that Castle had a little mind for laughing about Jessica's choice in research. If he was going to be humiliated either way, he'd take the ladies in leather.

But, as he was reminded yet again, riding along with Beckett meant he didn't get to call the shots. It was her team, her turf.

While Ryan and Esposito headed out, shameless grins on their faces, Castle decided to make the most of the situation and have fun the old-fashioned way, trying to coax her into a round of storytelling with him.

"That Kelly seemed so unassuming. I wonder if she has inner crazy-eyes," he said. "One day, she sees Jessica's research. . . ." Then he trailed off deliberately, waiting for the magical moment that Beckett would pick up from where he left off.

Instead, she grabbed her keys from the desk and shrugged ambivalently, as though he should be grateful that she heard him at all. "Anything's possible."

Not the response he'd wanted, but he could work with it. "Can I drive?" he asked, brightening.

"Except that."

He scowled behind her back as she headed out. He knew well enough that she never let him drive, but it was just hard to fathom how she could be so relentlessly mean, denying him so many pleasures at once. Had she no mercy?

Looking over her shoulder, she called for him, her voice barely low enough to assure him that she wasn't overheard: "Castle, you coming or do you need to be leashed?"

No mercy whatsoever.

At least she was wearing leather.

* * *

They hit a snag after they found the lipstick print in Mistress Red on the wine glass. Namely, that Lady Irena was suddenly unreachable.

There was little else that put Beckett in so fowl a mood besides hitting a snag both so late in the workday and so close to solving a case. If the domme had been reachable—and if the ensuing interrogation had gone more in the detective's favor than their first encounter had—Beckett might have been soaking in a tub within the hour.

Alas, she was at her desk, staring in the face of dead-ends on the domme's whereabouts because, like any clever and infuriating suspect, Irena had apparently turned off her phone and gone without using her credit cards for at least the past six hours. She wasn't at home or at work.

The receptionist at the House of Pain had been particularly unhelpful, reciting that it was none of her business as to where the Lady of the House was on her own time. Even Beckett's powerful personality and the benefit of the law could do nothing to get information out of her if Lady Irena had already guaranteed that the information was not available. She had, and it wasn't.

Beckett was about ready to go medieval, as Castle had put it last time.

It was too bad that Castle didn't take the hint now.

He was all for holding out for a shred of possibility, but all he could see was that Beckett was exhausted and frustrated and this investigation was up in the air and going nowhere like a submissive in suspension.

And he had secretly hoped that he would be able to convince Beckett to go to dinner with him.

His mother and daughter both had plans with friends and it was less a matter of not wanting to be alone as it was an interest in rekindling whatever the hell they had at Remy's and combining it with the inferno that was the cumulative sexual tension of these past two days. He always did like science experiments, especially those with the potential for sparks and explosions.

But the only sparks he was igniting tonight were on Beckett's short fuse, and he didn't know any better than to get out before she blew.

He didn't say so, but he just wanted so much to see her smile. He set a mug of coffee on her desk; she didn't even twitch.

"How's it going?" he asked tentatively.

"She's got my balls in a vise so about as you'd expect."

He swallowed and nodded and screened out every anatomical comment that came to mind. "Maybe you should've told her not to leave town," he said, trying to be helpful, "though I guess that wouldn't have worked as well this time, her being a lawyer."

"Castle, I'm not in the mood." She still didn't look at him, and even though he knew what had her upset, the lack of affirming attention was eating at him.

"I guess she would have known better." His face opened with suggestive mischief, the kind he thought she might genuinely appreciate. "Maybe you should've tied her to a bed."

"Castle," she snapped, finally looking up at him. "Go _home_."

He did, but he felt like he'd been put in the corner alone.

He would have preferred a spanking.

* * *

She wasn't as hard on anyone as she was on herself. She hung around a bit later at the precinct, beating herself up about not staying one step ahead of the suspect, but eventually she needed to yield to the fact that she couldn't camp out in the bullpen all night, waiting for Lady Irena to turn herself in.

Beckett went home.

* * *

Being a Smart Ass Masochist wasn't really working for Richard Castle. Sitting alone in his loft, his own little corner of SoHo, he came to terms with this.

Two factions were warring inside him.

First there was the part of him that refused to let Kate Beckett go, the part that couldn't do so if he tried. He wanted to be with her, and not just _be _with her—entwined with her limbs in all their lithe glory—but to _be_ with her, to stand by her, to keep her company even in her missing-suspect misery.

Then there was the part of him that refused to disrespect her wishes. Wanting to be with her didn't seem to be a good enough excuse to inflict even more misery on her, to make her feel either ignored or unheard altogether. He didn't want to prove that he was just as selfish and inconsiderate as she ever believed he was.

_Do whatever you want to do. You always do, anyway._

It was the first time in a long time that he thought of that fight at his book launch, back in the fall.

His complete and total failure to figure out what he really wanted, let alone to tell her; the way he only infuriated her somehow instead. The furrow in her brow as she provoked him in kind. Neither one of them actually saying much of anything. The torrid dance that accomplished nothing but driving them away from each other.

They had worked through that on some surface level—never to any great depth or detail—but it seemed like an awful lot of pointlessness in hindsight.

And he had a point to make.

* * *

The knock on her door was crisp; the rhythm vaguely incomplete, as though interrupted. She knew why when she opened the door to reveal Castle shifting a brown paper bag in his arms. It was haphazardly wrapped in a white plastic bag with a big yellow smiley face printed on the front.

He offered no greeting; only explanation. "Handles broke."

She noticed them and nodded dumbly, still making no move to beckon him inside. "Chinese food," she said, as though he needed her to tell him what hot, steamy thing smelled like that and came in a bag with a smile.

"It's the future," he said, voice equally informative, face still deadpan. She'd said _for future reference_. She never said _when_.

"Yeah," she agreed, but before she could make up her mind about how this was going to go, he was already walking past her and setting the bag down in the kitchen, stoically relieving both the weight and the burn of his hands.

His relief was subtle enough that she wouldn't have noticed it at all if she hadn't been watching so closely; still poised at the open door as though she might actually kick out a hungry, wounded gift-bearer.

She wasn't unaffected at the sight, but she showed no sympathy, either. Likewise, she didn't order him to go, but she wasn't exactly playing hostess.

It wouldn't have mattered; he made himself comfortable, shrugging off his coat.

Without saying so, she tried to rub in the fact that coming over uninvited and without calling first was dumb on his part, even if he wasn't entirely unwelcome: "What if I'd still been at the Twelfth?" she asked.

"But you weren't," he replied, effortlessly retrieving her silverware as though he did this every night.

She spoke over the untimely grumble from her gut, woefully reminding her that she'd neglected herself tonight; that he'd been right not only about where to find her but also about the state of her stomach. "But what if I _was_?"

"Then the food would've gotten cold by the time I found you."

No conceivable response could have thrown her off the way that did.

The idea of him going through the trouble of pursuing her, trying both her apartment and the precinct, just to bring her Chinese food?

It wasn't like she would have expected him to wait endlessly at her apartment door to surprise her. She just would have expected him to give up or go away or—not to have tried at all.

In fact, she'd told him not two hours earlier to go home. What the hell was he doing here?

Even as he pulled out a few takeout containers that smelled like salvation, she allowed the venom to surge back up inside her and asked pointedly: "And what if I'd had company?" She did her best to make it sound like that actually could have been a possibility.

But he didn't miss a beat. "Then you would've had to fight for the second fortune cookie."

At that, she rolled her eyes and shut the front door, seizing the opportunity to hide a trace of an unbidden smile, and joined him in the kitchen.


	2. Chapter 2

Notes: An AU twist, as promised. Now that I've finished the original story, I'm up for continuing this one for as long as there's interest and inspiration strikes. Usually I have much more planned by the time I post something, so updates here will be slower than typical of me.

* * *

She was stuffed.

Only for one moment did she hesitate when Castle asked if she wanted the last steamed dumpling. Thinking better of it, she waved noncommittally at the container in his hands. "You can do the honors."

Fork poised over the dumpling, he met her eye. "You're sure?"

"Positive."

"But you would tell me if you did want it." It wasn't a question, and since he didn't seem unsure, she couldn't tell why he was still looking at her the way that he was. "You just had enough."

She gave him a funny look right back and promised, "Yeah. I know my limits."

He speared the dumpling before reaching for something else altogether. "Then I guess you won't mind if I take your fortune cookie," he said, popping the dumpling in his mouth while fingering the clear wrapper.

"Oh, no. Drop the cookie," she ordered as though it were a weapon. The little panda bear depicted on the wrapper smiled back at her. "You can have the fortune. I have no use for that."

"No, that's the rule," Castle said around his mouthful. He swallowed the last of the dumpling as he kept the cookie out of her reach. "You eat the cookie, you lay claim to the fortune. Unless, of course, you changed your mind and I can have it. . . ."

She leaned in more than he expected she could—seriously, just how flexible was she?—and snatched the wrapper. "Not a chance."

He picked up the second fortune cookie. "You ever add 'in bed' to the end?" he teased.

"You can't take anything seriously, can you?"

"Actually, Alexis and I usually add 'with zombies' instead, but—wait. Are you telling me you want to take fortune cookies seriously?"

Wordlessly, she conceded the point.

He would have helped himself to a tally on his scoreboard, but he was too engrossed in the moment to remember it; he wanted to continue the conversation before Beckett had time to feel uncomfortable in the silence. "You know these wouldn't even sell in China?" he asked. "They were based on a Japanese recipe before they became a Chinese-American thing."

"I think I read something about that in _The Joy Luck Club_," she said. It had been a while, but a classic story about mothers and daughters was hard to forget, not to mention an insight about one of her favorite kinds of food.

He nodded. "Blame the American appetite for 'vaguely Asian' stuff."

For the first time in months, Beckett thought of Danishes. She could no longer remember what they'd been called when they were named for Vienna, let alone the name of the original Austrian recipe.

No matter how many times she'd read _Heat Wave_, she still remembered who she was. And even at times when she'd been unsure—after the Halloween party, and after Coonan died—it was none other than Castle who had reminded her with no more than a gentle brush of his fingers and the soothing words, _"Now you're yourself, Kate."_

He knew her so well.

Again Castle broke the silence; roused her from her thoughts, fiddling with the wrapper. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he promised, waggling his brows.

She shook her head as though trying to be disappointed in him. "When has that line ever worked?"

"Hey, anything's possible except for me driving," he reminded her, holding up his naked cookie. "Last call. You in or out?"

"Fine. Yeah." She discarded her wrapper.

He unfurled his fortune and read aloud: "_A friend will be important to you and your forthcoming success._"

"In bed," she added when he didn't; teasing him a little too easily before realizing why he had hesitated, why a new expression had washed over Castle's face from the fortune alone. Something like recognition, gratitude.

She had wondered as recently as Christmas, but she didn't need to wonder anymore. He considered her a friend. Even after she chewed him up and spitted him out tonight, it didn't change how he saw her.

A friend. If she was instrumental to his success, it was not simply as a muse. She was sure of that.

His own moment of genuine humility had caught him by surprise, but as he recovered, he had the good sense not to comment on _forthcoming success in bed_; in fact, found a way to laugh off the whole fortune. "Mm. Wonder which of my friends is going to help me fend off zombies," he said. "I hope it's Joe Schreiber. The only thing better than zombies is space-zombies." Then he crunched and chewed and nodded toward the unbroken cookie in her hand. "All right, give it up."

Without any trace of reluctance or dispute, she broke it in two and pulled away the pieces, but she had no sooner opened her mouth to speak before she shut it again. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly, and Castle made a sacrificial decision on the spot.

"You don't actually need to." Admittedly, it wasn't that selfless a sacrifice; it served to prove what he came here tonight to prove: that he would push her, but he wouldn't _push _her. He would keep redrawing her line, but he would never intentionally cross it.

It wasn't that he actually believed there was anything so personal about a mystery fortune from a takeout restaurant; giving it to her to keep to herself just seemed like a fairly simple way to make his point.

"Oh?" came out of a strangely dry throat. Without the presence of mind to swallow, she tried to compensate by licking her lips. "And what's the penalty for not going through with a deal?"

She still heard it in the back of her mind: _We made a deal, and I expect you to honor that. _She knew she'd considered them to have moved past that point, going so far as to ask him to walk her home from Remy's in spite of their bet, but part of her was still waiting for the day that Castle would throw her terms back in her face.

"No penalty," he said. She had gone into it willingly, and that was something. He only shrugged and told her, "Circumstances changed. A deal isn't a deal anymore if one person has to force the other. So if you won't share, I won't make you."

"Good," she said, ignoring his less-than-subtle subtext and rallying back to a place of superior confidence, "because I wasn't going to."

"Sure you weren't." He smiled and stood, scooped up the wrappers from the cookies and tossed them in the paper bag, cleaning up after them as a courtesy to his companion.

Then came the part of the evening he'd planned all along, and just when he'd started to feel like he wasn't going to be able to go through with it, this fortuitous conversation had encouraged him.

He made himself the first to say good night.

He did it gently, lightly, letting it come across as simply time to go and not like she had chased him away.

In order for his plan to work, she needed to sense that the decision was his and his alone; that it wasn't a ploy to play hard-to-get but an active choice to respect her time and space. She needed to see that he knew her unspoken wishes well enough to fulfill them; that he knew her implicit boundaries well enough to adhere to them; that what he didn't know, he would gladly learn.

She had to realize that he had redrawn her line—invited himself into just a little bit more of her life than she thought she could manage—and agree to meet him there and only there.

And for a moment, he was afraid that she was going to destabilize them; that she would not be able to relinquish the power of drawing; that she would take a step back or a step forward just to stay in control. If she took a step back, there was no way to know whether she would ever come to trust him. If she took a step forward, he wasn't sure that he could trust himself not to take another too soon.

Whatever he may have wanted, he needed her to yield.

He offered her a parting smile as she ate half her fortune cookie and nodded as though to agree that he could show himself out.

Her gaze fell to the fortune she had unwrapped but kept to herself:

_"Conquer your fears or they will conquer you."_

Beckett swallowed her mouthful, her brow furrowing again as she considered the words. Was there nothing in the world that didn't come down to power?

She looked up at the back of Castle's head as he walked to the door; stole a glance at the rest of his long body in motion; remembered sneaking this same once-over the night he walked her home from Remy's. He'd turned to go without expecting anything more from her, even though she'd been the one to seek his company and it would have been easy for him then to misunderstand her boundaries, her willingness.

He really was serious. Despite all of his covert digging on her mom's case, despite all the poking and prodding around in her personal and professional life for the sake of his book, despite all of his flirting and sexual innuendoes, despite all of the ways he routinely pushed her buttons—despite all of that, he was never actually going to thrust her too far beyond what she could manage. He had proven that he had her best interests in mind, if not at heart.

She would never be his conquest, nor would he be hers. But fear had cornered her, consumed her; that conquest seemed all but inevitable, unless—

The front door was open now, his hand on the knob. He was going to leave.

"Castle." She leapt up after him, accidentally crowding his back when he slowed; found herself momentarily buzzed with the warmth of him.

He would've said, _"Yeah?"_ but the moment he turned around, her lips were on his. Her fingers pulled him in so firmly that he felt his flesh slide against his jawbone just as she stole his breath away.

He could feel himself succumbing to the power of her presence, the intoxication of her will, the intensity of everything unsaid between them tangling together in an indistinguishable mess. His mind pounded with both relief and anguish, the tension of the two only distressing him all the more. It wasn't supposed to be this way—he was supposed to be leaving now. Gone already, in fact.

He had forced his way into another layer of Kate Beckett's life and undermined her control, and now she had ruined him for it. She took that step forward that could never be untaken and everything in him that now knew the taste of the real flesh-and-bones Kate asked him, _Why would you ever want to go back? _and he had no answer because he didn't want that at all.

He didn't even want to break the kiss when he finally did.

She pressed her forehead to his as they both surfaced from the deluge of want to gasp for air.

"I would tell you," she murmured feverishly. "I _am _telling you."

"What?" He swallowed with measured effort, trying to decipher the few words that she'd been able to form, both of them lost in a moment of indescribable vulnerability.

But she didn't say it, didn't speak; only let her momentum and the element of surprise push him back against the front door, shutting it instantly. Their tongues touched and tasted one another, satiation a dream; their bodies warmed one another with infinite points of contact and wayward attempts for even greater closeness.

Somehow, at some point, he pulled away enough to ask: "You don't really have an imaginary boyfriend, do you?" After all of her teasing this week, he honestly didn't know. Some small part of him was sensible enough to remember to ask.

She looked and felt disoriented—by the question or the kisses, neither of them could tell. When she caught her breath, she managed to tell him no.

"Good," he said. "Because I'd hate for him to be watching this." And he kissed her again.


End file.
